


bloom later

by yorkes



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, i couldn't think of a title, it makes sense in my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 05:41:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16570709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorkes/pseuds/yorkes
Summary: It was an old Irish legend, older than Mad Sweeney himself. Back when Sweeney was first cursed to his eternal wandering, it was relatively common for babies to be born without the ability to see in color. He was one of those babies, and his parents had been ecstatic. It meant to their little boy had a soulmate. The black and white vision was temporary. Whenever Sweeney found his supposed soulmate, his life would be in color.People lost faith in the gods that reigned over Ireland in the middle ages. Slowly, the concept of soulmates died out as well. Black and white vision became a rarity.Laura just thought she had an extreme case of color blindness.(or, a soulmate au where when you see your soulmate for the first time you gain the ability to see in color)





	bloom later

**Author's Note:**

> When I saw there wasn't a proper soulmate au for these two, I decided to write a little something up. This follows the canon timeline for the most part but clearly has the au twist. I hope my characterization isn't too off! Please comment and let me know if you like! The title is inspired by the song"Bloom Later" by Jesse Rutherford.
> 
> Also, note: this is solely based off of the of the television adaption of American Gods, not the book.

Laura Moon never thought of her life as extraordinary. Not even a smidge. If anything it was exceedingly boring. The word  _ extraordinary _ implies something grander. Sure, extraordinary circumstances could happen that made her late to work, but those were mostly lies anyway. An extraordinary life? Laura hardly had that. The only quirk to her life took away a simple joy.

Laura was in preschool when someone first noticed. Her little four-year hands grabbed at rainbow color blocks to stack them up high and then promptly knocked them all back down with a crash. This small action brought a smile to her face, something her parents could barely achieve, but it was not what she was supposed to be doing. The nun that served as her preschool teacher let out a tut and prompted her back to work. 

Only, when Laura actually attempted the task at hand, she was scolded further. A young Laura didn’t understand why. There were square holes cut out along a long wooden slab and that’s where the blocks were supposed to go. She was placing the squares into those slots. 

“Laura,” the old nun chided, exasperated by the nerve of this little girl. Laura just stared up with her. “You match the blocks to the rainbow on the wood. Just line up the colors.” The nun pointed her old, wrinkled finger to the swoosh of pigment on the top of the block that stretched to fit the width. 

Only Laura didn’t see a rainbow. All she saw was a grayscale. She shook her head, brown hair swishing around her shoulders.

When her mom came to pick her up that day, Sister Beatrice pulled Mrs. McCabe aside.

Laura sat on the bench outside the classroom, feet swinging a foot off the ground. Her classmates filed out the room, sneaking glances at her. From their hushed whispers and wide eyes Laura knew they all thought she was in trouble. Laura couldn’t see how she was. She’d been faced with an impossible task.

She scooted to the side of the bench that was closest to the door and tried to listen to what the adults were saying. She couldn’t pick up much, but the phrase “color blind” kept popping up. Laura had no idea what that meant, but it was far from the last time she would hear those two words. 

What the doctors later discovered was that Laura had achromatopsia. Her version of color blindness was more extreme than reds and greens; she couldn’t see any color other than black and white. She’d had it since birth likely, but no one had noticed it and Laura never thought to question it. Her mom had a conniption over the fact she’d never realized.

“Which color do you like better, sweetheart,” her mom pressed, holding up two wash clothes after school that day. Laura looked between them and saw two nearly identical objects. One was just a bit lighter than the other. 

“They look the same,” Laura answered, much to her mother’s dismay.

This caused her mom to send a blurry of voicemails to optometrists that put Laura in doctor’s offices for weeks. Each doctor said the same thing, but Laura’s mom kept carting her around. At one point, walking up a new office, she tugged on her mom’s pant leg. 

“I really don’t mind not seeing colors, mommy.” It was true. Laura couldn’t miss what she never had. Her mom pointing out all the colors in her bedroom didn’t change that. So what, she’d never know what pink looked like. She just wanted her life to go back to normal. 

And so it did. Laura grew up. She went from calling the woman who birthed her ‘mommy’ to ‘mom’ to ‘mother’ and for a small period in her life ‘Diane’. She learned how to function with her lack of vision; she learned to read the tags when it came to shopping. People always commented that her style was very monochromatic. Laura just didn’t want to rely on anyone’s else’s opinion when it came to pairing color.

When she was little, she would answer people’s curious questions.  _ “Can you really not see that the shirt I’m wearing is blue?” “No, Daniella, I cannot.”  _ As she got older she typically just told people to fuck off. 

She got a job as a croupier to pay for tuition, but she ended up staying there after she graduated. She’d learned the variations in color to properly read a deck of cards, and barely anyone other than her boss knew of her little vision quirk. That was where she met Shadow.

Laura went from Laura McCabe to Laura Moon and even had the whole white wedding. She was thankful for the traditions that went along with Western weddings because it meant she didn’t even need Audrey’s opinion on color. She wanted a dress that was as white as they came. When she told the woman at the wedding dress store, Audrey had snickered and commented that Laura was hardly a virginal vision in white, that she should at least get cream. Laura stood firm on her choice; she walked down the aisle in a dress without a drop of gray. She had never cared much for color symbolism anyway. 

Laura’s life was fine. Typical, one could say, other than her quirk with vision. She asked Shadow not to bring it up, so he never did. They were an ordinary couple who at least had a healthy sex life, but Laura was never really satisfied with anything in her life.

When she asked Shadow if they could rob the casino, she was just trying to put off another bug spray incident that this time might actually work. The plan was solid, and she thought it would be fun. She didn’t think Shadow would end up in jail. 

When he took the heat for all of it, Laura barely put up a fight. A small part of her thought jail might shake things up, but Shadow shook his head. He’d see her when he got out, and their life would be normal again. 

_ God _ , Laura thought,  _ that’s wasn’t really the point. _

So she waited for him. For a bit. Then the cat died, and Robbie came over, and she started having sex with him. She didn’t like term affair; Robbie didn’t deserve that much credit.

How she ended up in a crash dead, Laura didn’t like to linger on, but here she was. Dead. 

For the first time, Laura actually wanted to live. If anything so she wouldn’t be stuck in a hot tub with bug spray fumes for all eternity. 

It was the only time a prayer of hers had come true. And this wasn’t even a prayer, it was annoyed exclaim at the universe. One second she was fighting with Anubis. The next, she was back in her grave.

She wasn’t quite alive. She would need a heartbeat for that. But she also wasn’t entirely dead, and that’s all that mattered.

 

* * *

 

It was an old Irish legend, older than Mad Sweeney himself. Back when Sweeney was first cursed to his eternal wandering, it was relatively common for babies to be born without the ability to see in color. He was one of those babies, and his parents had been ecstatic. It meant to their little boy had a soulmate. The black and white vision was temporary. Whenever Sweeney found his supposed soulmate, his life would be in color. He had to give it up to those ancient Irish gods, they really had a penchant for metaphors.

Sweeney grew up and his life continued on without color. He became a king, got cursed by a Saint, and even transformed into a bird to escape battle. Somewhere in all of this he became the guardian of an old mythic rock in the mountains of Ireland, and the term leprechaun was coined to describe people like him. Sweeney lived on, barely, but the myths he grew up with did not.

People lost faith in the gods that reigned over Ireland in the middle ages. Slowly, the concept of soulmates died out as well. Black and white vision became a rarity. Years later, when people got more interested in medicine, Sweeney came to the conclusion that perhaps his affliction was of the scientific persuasion. No cared for Irish folklore anymore, anyhow. Not in him, definitely not in something more ancient. 

The old concept of soulmates was still somewhere in the back of his mind, but it after all those years it was almost forgotten. He reckoned he was almost as bad as all the humans who’d lost their faith to the new gods. How could he expect anyone to keep up belief in him when he dismissed his own. 

That’s where Grimnir came in. He went by a lot of names, but more than anything he was Sweeney’s boss. The new gods liked to tempt Sweeney with new age promises, but Grimnir stuck to the old ways. He practically was the old way embodied. They weren’t doing him a lot of favors, but at least he wasn’t on a kellogg's box. That honor was still given to the fictional menaces that were said to be a quarter of his height. 

All Sweeney needed was some belief. No one left bits of their bread out for him anymore, but he wasn’t gone. That meant something.

Sweeney stuck by the old guy’s side in hopes his promises would come true someday. Grimnir was always going on how he would start a war, that it would make things better, but that day had yet to come. So Sweeney did what he asked and hoped for the best. 

When Grimnir requested Sweeney kill some woman out in Indiana, he drove to Indiana. Grimnir referred to her as some guy’s wife, so Sweeney could guess Grimnir’s intentions lay with the Mr. rather than the Mrs., but he didn’t question it. He drove up to the address he was given, and when her car left the garage he followed it. It was too dark to see much, but he could make out two figures in front seats. Collateral damage, he wrote it off as. Grimnir had pressed this matter was time sensitive, so Sweeney didn’t have time to wait until this Laura Moon was in the car on her own. 

He followed his orders. He ran her and her companion off the road in the veil of night. It was as routine as any other hit job he’d done. At least, the killing part had been. 

It all happened quickly. Before he could register the familiarity of her face, his vision was flooded with color. Even in the dim light, that color was astounding. After several millennia, the most muted of colors were pretty spectacular. All those colors were making up a face that he’d seen a few hundred years before. He knew the dead girl in front of him wasn’t Essie MacGowan, but she was a dead ringer for the Irish girl whose unwavering belief had brought him to America in the first place. 

Sweeney forgot for a moment he was there to verify Laura’s death until it happened. Whatever grasp to life that was she hanging onto gave out.

His life snapped back into black and white. Sweeney swore; he muttered out just about every obscenity he could think of. He knew he had to get out of there, someone would notice the wrecked car, but he couldn’t look away.

“Of fucking course,” he finally said, forcing himself to look away from her glassy eyes. He didn’t know if the boss man had any idea what he was sending Sweeney out to do, but he wouldn’t put it past Grimnir persay. If it hadn’t been  _ his _ specific divine intervention, Sweeney imagined one of the ancient Irish gods used their last breaths to screw him over just one last time.

Either way, he thought this pretty fucking cruel.

The ravens were circling in, begging for an answer. Grimnir’s goddamn birds were always there. They had always been gossips. 

“Tell him,” Sweeney finally spit out, looking up to the sky. “Tell him it’s done.”

 

* * *

 

_ “No, I’m not.”  _ Shadow’s response had been a slap in the face.

Laura wasn’t sure what she expected when she saw Shadow, but that? She’d asked him that stupid question to get a sweet reply. She wanted reassurance that Shadow still the man who robbed a casino because she was unhappy. That he was still her puppy. But he said he wasn’t.

Then he left.

There was this glow around Shadow that signaled his departure. That burst of light in her vision slowly faded until it merely a blip. This realized, she slipped out of the tub. There was no one to be warm for anymore. 

When she got out, she caught her reflection in the crusty motel mirror. Sure, the stitches weren’t the most flattering and there were some flies flying around her, but she was still the same old Laura. Just a bit deader. What had always felt metaphorical was just real now. She truly was dead inside.

So, Shadow wasn’t her puppy. He was still her husband. He’d prompted her first heart beat in her post death body. Never in life had any man made her heart skip a beat, but thought making a dead heart beat again was much better.  _ Downright romantic _ , she thought. It was in that moment, even after Shadow had left her dead and naked in a shitty motel room, she decided she would make this work. She’d been given another shot at life; the first time around no one would shut up about how the best part of her life had to be Shadow. This time around maybe she would try a little harder to appreciate that. 

Not that she hadn’t loved him before, but it had been never enough. Hence the desire to rob a casino. Now, she was going to make it enough to be the whole reason. 

She moved to put on the clothes she’d been wearing before she’d gotten all prettied up for their reunion. She’d just gotten the shirt over her head when the door burst open.

 

* * *

 

Of course,  _ she  _ was the one who had his coin.

Sweeney had completed a series of jobs for Grimnir - who now was apparently going by Wednesday - and at every turn, things were going south. First, he killed some guy’s wife who turned out to his soulmate. Second, he’s ordered to go find the guy whose wife he’s killed, instigate a fight with him by commenting on his dead wife’s obituary. All throughout that fight, he couldn’t get over the fact she looked just like Essie. As a result of that distraction, he gave his lucky coin away to Wednesday’s new man.

His luck was for shit already, but losing his coin? The sour cherry on top. 

At least he could equate his bad luck to something. What took him by surprise was when he was driving to Chicago to take his coin back from Shadow. All the sudden, the black and white midwestern landscape altered. Only, it wasn’t the work of a God, it was his own sight. After Laura’s heart stopped his world had gone back to black and white; for some reason, a week later, the color was back. Only this time it was incredibly muted. It was as if everything had been desaturated. 

He almost expected the answer when Shadow told him. Shadow Moon had given the coin away to his dead wife.

Throughout that initial drive from Eagle Point to Jack’s Crocodile Bar, he’d been devastated. Sweeney hadn’t shown true blue emotion since Essie McGowan died a few hundred years back. Then, suddenly, her doppelganger shows up. In her obituary, he’d spotted that Laura’s maiden name had been McCabe. It wasn’t McGowan, but it was Irish. He imagined she was Essie’s great however many time’s over relative. But it couldn’t end there with guilt over a connection to his last true believer. No, Laura Moon née McCabe had to be his goddamn soulmate. 

And he killed her. 

Towards the end of his drive, he came to a conclusion; he would forget about Laura. If he had to think of her passing, it would be through the lens of Shadow. Laura was simply the dead wife.

This was easier when his world was still in black and white. When colors crept back in, his confusion was clouded by his guilt. And a sense of mourning. The old legends always said when your soulmate dies you lose the color in your vision. Maybe, they changed the rules for Sweeney. He guessed they wanted to give him a reminder of what he’d done every time he opened his eyes.

He didn’t want to go to her grave. He didn’t need more reminders, nor did want them. But, he needed his coin. If he was going to get his life back on track he had to get his lucky coin.

So he turned around. Back to Eagle Point, back to the dead wife. Only, as he discovered when he dug through her grave (with gritted teeth and more hesitations than he’d like to acknowledge), the dead wife was missing. Her casket, where a hole the size of his coin had burned through the wood, was empty.

With that, his theory on why he could see muted colors shifted.

 

* * *

 

Laura spun around to see who the intruder was. She’d known it wasn’t Shadow from when she first heard the click of the door opening; his glow was far away. Who showed up had no glow, but the instant she locked eyes on him something even stranger than Shadow’s glow appeared. 

It was color. Laura was seeing color. The man who barged into her room was in different shades and tones she didn’t have the names to describe. She doubted the motel had the best interior design, but faint shades of  _ something  _ appeared around the room.

Whoever this man was, he was not willing give her time to acknowledge the drastic shift in her life. He started to speak, and from the sound of him she gathered he was mad at her.  _ Join the club _ , she thought. 

“You’re the wife,” he said, “you’re the dead wife.” Laura blinked. He was clearly heated about something, and he was huge so his anger should’ve scare her. But in death, she was hardly phased.

“Give me my fucking coin, de-” 

Laura cut him off before he could continue. 

“What color is your hair?” she asked plainly. He’d looked as though he were about to lunge at her, but her words stopped him. There was a shift in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. “I asked you a question,” she said, shaking him out of whatever had come over him, “I asked - what color is your fucking hair?”

“I’ve been told it’s orange,” he said after a few moments. She gave a little nod, staring up at the mop of hair on his head.  Sweeney had looked in a mirror after his color partially came back just to make sure people hadn’t been lying to him all those years.

Laura looked thoughtful as her eyes traveled down to his jacket, getting caught on it. 

She was thinking about how she had heard colors described. Whatever color this orange haired -  _ so this is was a ginger is  _ she connected -man’s jacket was, she liked. She’d always heard green was a calm color, but she knew that grass was green and she didn’t think grass looked like  _ that _ . She’d have to peek outside to be sure. 

Sweeney, on the other hand, was thinking about how he _ should’ve fucking known _ . It wouldn’t as simple as walking in and demanding his coin back. He knew as the dead wife’s eyes roamed him they weren’t sizing him up for a fight or even checking him out; the dead wife was looking at colors for the first time. Because as much as he called her that, she wasn’t just a guy’s dead wife. 

Also, somehow, she was kind of alive. If his vision hadn’t hinted at that much, her walking and talking body did.

Shoving any whimsical thoughts of soulmates as far away as he could, he charged at her and looked down her throat. Sure enough, there it was. His shining lucky coin, down in the pit of her stomach. 

It was with his coin’s power, with a flick of her finger, that he sent was flying across the room. He landed with a loud thud against the motel wall. 

“You mean my fucking coin,” Laura corrected. The color was disorienting, but things were starting to come into focus in other avenues. The coin Shadow left on her grave was what revived her body, that much she’d already guessed. The strength she could only imagine came from it as well. As she crouched in front of a man who was in pain from just a small portion of that strength, she figured the coin might other powers. 

_ Maybe it’s the coin _ , she thought,  _ maybe it’s what was letting me see color _ . Why at that specific instance? She hadn’t thought that far.

“Dead can’t own things,” he argued, “That’s why god made last wills and testaments. Don’t imagine yours included my lucky coin.” He made a move with his hand, but she slapped it away. With the coin’s help that small movement did some damage.

“My lucky coin, ginger minge,” she reminded. “My husband gave that coin to me.”

Laura heard him ranting and raving, but she caught bits and pieces. “It wasn’t his to give,” he ultimately said, going on to say in more or less words that Shadow wasn’t worthy of it. By extension, Laura assumed he was including her in that statement. “Just give me my fucking coin back!”

“No,” she said simply. It was as casual of a reply as pulling on her boots.

“You’ll never see me again if you do. I swear by fucking Bran. I- I swear by the years I spent in the fucking trees.” He yelled at her to give back his coin, Laura reiterated her answer with actions as well as words. With whatever the hell he was going on about, Laura assumed this was a good time to figure some things out.

That’s where things got strange. Arguably on the same level of strange as being resurrected into a rotting body and ingesting a coin that gave her super strength, but strange, nevertheless.

“He’s a god,” the man said. According to him, Shadow’s new boss, a man her husband knew as Wednesday, was a god. Laura was sure her reaction was priceless. Sweeney thought she’d be more inclined to believe after what she’d been through. Her raised eyebrows said otherwise. “Don’t believe me?”

“No, no. Just processing. Um, what else did God tell you to do?”  _ Kill you,  _ Sweeney thought. But didn’t say, obviously. Little too early in their relationship for that one.

“You shouldn’t trust him,” he said suddenly. “Grimnir.”

“Wednesday,” she clarified.

“Don’t trust him,” he repeated.

“Don’t have to,” she said.

“You man does, and he shouldn’t,” he said, but paused, realizing how off track he was getting. He didn’t owe her anything. He sure as hell shouldn’t be giving her advice to keep her out of harm’s way. He was harm’s way - he was the one who’d killed her in the first place. “Listen, just give my fucking coin back, yeah?” If she said yes, he could leave and get as far away from her as he could. 

“There’s more where that came from, I’ll give you another!” he tried. Coins starting popping out of thin air for her, and he was really hoping she’d bite. “Just as good,” he promised, somewhere in his sell. 

“Just as good?” She reached into the hat he’d thrown a batch into, and plunked one out.

“Just as good,” he repeated. 

“Mm,” Laura dismissed, twisting it around. “I don’t really feel like any of those coins are going to the do the job my coin’s doing.” She looked from the coin to his face and read the complete disappointment. He’d put his damn fedora on in defeat. “You can’t take it can you?” she asked, crouching down to his level, sat on the ground, “I have to give it to you freely, right?” 

“Right,” he confirmed. He wasn’t going to tell her that this had to do with the soulmate factor than the coin factor. He was certain she no idea soulmates even existed, nevertheless that she had one. 

“Well, you’re fucked,” she exclaimed with a laugh. It was joyful even. “I’m not going to give it to you. Come on. I don’t think you’re ever going to get your coin back. Never ever ever. Not ever.”

A realization came over Sweeney as he saw the stiches up her arm and smelled the faint rot.

“Not not ever,” he corrected. Even if his coin was giving her animation, it couldn’t sustain a corpse for long. He told her this much, and this got Laura to listen to him. “You’re gonna fall right off the bone.”

He wasn’t sure what his goal with all this precisely was. He knew she wouldn’t surrender his coin right then, right there. Scaring her into giving it up clearly hadn’t worked. It’d only left him worse for wear.

Laura looked deep in thought as she obviously considering what would happen to her. She didn’t look particularly distraught, but certainly moreso than she had throughout their conversation. There was a look in her eyes that had an tinge of sadness. 

Sweeney truly did consider trying to kill her right then and there. There was a part of him that wanted this all to be over; a part really wanted to believe this soulmate twist was cruel joke. And Sweeney was nothing if not a man who acknowledged belief. Yet, as he stood there, predicting how her body would finally give out, he realized he didn’t want her dead.

Sweeney hardly knew the girl, but he’d grown up with stories about soulmates. Grimnir would occasionally yell at him for being too soft at times, and though Sweeney would disagree and go off to prove himself, he had a heart. Most everyone did. It broke a little even before he saw Laura’s face when he’d killed her. Just a little, but there were a lots of cracks there already. Having a soulmate after all these years… there was small beaten down part of him that saw some hope in that.

“Is there a way to fix me?” Laura asked, “make me truly alive again.” She hoped her face looked remiss. It felt like a weakness to tell this stranger how much she wanted to live despite the fact anyone in her situation would want that. It was a strange feeling for for Laura. As weird as looking down to her hand and seeing beige instead of gray. “If I’m truly alive, I won’t need your precious coin will I?’

Sweeney thought before he responded. There was a way, possibly, that he knew of. If he told Laura this he’d be directly entangling himself in her life and going against his intended plan of action. Wednesday’s too. On the hand, he’d have his coin back. He might have fully colored vision again. Laura would be alive. Taking a long, last look at her, he finally spoke. 

“I might know someone who could help you out.”

Leprechauns were supposedly highly meddlesome. Sweeney thought it was high time he started meddling in his own affairs.

 

* * *

 

The first few days, Sweeney was confident he wasn’t getting too attached.

After a lost car and an attempted robbery of a taxi, they’d picked up another travel partner. The taxi’s owner was named Salim and he was trying to find a Jinn he’d had an encounter with. He’d completely uprooted his life for the guy. Laura thought it was one of the more romantic things she’d heard, and her husband robbed a casino just because she’d asked him to. 

Laura liked his company, but she thought it was wrong Sweeney was just keeping him along for his car.  He was withholding where Salim’s Jinn would be to get a ride.

Sweeney was keeping him along for more reasons than that. It was good to have a third wheel. Laura didn’t know that they needed one, but Sweeney sure as hell did.

When Sweeney was sleeping in the back seat, trying to forget the mess he’d landed himself in, Laura had redirected them from Kentucky to Indiana. He’d think anyone would be thrilled to get to their resurrection as soon as possible, but not Laura. She wanted to see her family again.

Salim and Sweeney watched in silence from the taxi as Laura hovered outside her family home. She didn’t want to speak them it seemed, just see them. When she slumped back down into the passenger seat and simply asked Salim to drive, Sweeney itched to ask what was going through her head. She’d taken quite the detour to see him, and she only watched them for a few minutes. 

What was going through Laura’s head was a sadness she couldn’t put a word to. She had a second chance at life and she hadn’t even tried to accomplish much with her first go around. She thought seeing her family might shake some values into her, give her an ah ha moment about what she should be doing. They’d believed in a higher power. Laura was proof now their beliefs held some water. But looking through that glass, through a pane her breath couldn’t fog and in a cold she couldn’t feel, she just felt more disconnected from her family than she ever had. Given her tenuous relationship with them in life, that was a feat.

“Fuck those assholes?” Salim asked, using Laura’s own words from earlier.

“Fuck those assholes,” she confirmed, focusing her eyes on the cigarette she’d lit.

They drove off. Laura didn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

One of the times Salim stopped to pray, Laura observed him. Sweeney had stayed by the car, but Laura moved closer. They’d stopped in a field at sunset, and the colors were beautiful. All these shades of yellow and red were melting over the midwestern landscape. She didn’t know the names of the shades herself, but she loved them.

“Allahu Akbar. God is great,” Salim said, catching Laura’s eye. 

“Life is great, Salim Not Salim,” she said instead. She’d never said those words before, but she meant them.

“Life is great,” he repeated with a wide smile.

There was more to the world than Laura could had ever dreamt. Salim believed in something, she assumed Sweeney believed something as well as was believed, and she couldn’t help but wonder what she believed in. Until she figured that out, she took her words to heart. Life is great, and she needed to make sure she was able to live it.

 

* * *

 

They stopped the next day at a monument for a Lakota white buffalo. Salim needed to pray, and though Sweeney was getting annoyed with the constant stops, Laura perched herself on the base of the statue to watch. 

“You can join if you like. I can show you,” Salim offered.

“I’m just watching,” Laura said. “So do you love God? Or are you in love with God?”

“Hmm,” he considered, “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Yes, I suppose it’s so. I do love my God.”

Laura was silent as he went through the motions of his prayer. But to Salim, it wasn’t just motions, it was devotion. She’d never cared so deeply for anything like he did. Maybe, that was changing. She cared about getting back to Shadow. She really cared about being properly alive again.

She left Salim to go find Sweeney. It felt wrong holding someone practically hostage when they were genuinely so well meaning. Salim was something Laura would never be. She admired him.

Sweeney was at the edge of wood like he said he’d be, off to take a piss. But he’d moved on to talking to a bird by the time Laura showed up. 

One of Wednesday’s ravens had flown down to squawk at him.

“Fuck off,” he said, without raising his voice at first. “I will eat you!” he warned as the raven continued to shout Wednesday’s orders at him. “I’m on the way to Wisconsin, per the arrangement, which I have kept my end of,” he promised, hoping it’d go away, but it only prompted the bird to voice its owners disappointment. “He doesn’t like it? You tell that one-eyed-gowl.. You tell-,” he paused, wondering if it was the right time to mess with Wednesday “Fuck you. That’s what you tell him.”

“Talking to the birds?” Laura teased, walking up as he’d turned away from the raven. 

“Christ, can’t a man get a moment alone with his prick.”

“I think we should let Salim go,” Laura said.

“No, we should fucking not.”

The two continued to fight over the matter as they walked over to Salim, who was wrapping up his prayer. 

“We’re near enough, we don’t need him anymore,” Laura argued.

“I’m only taking this detour for you!” Sweeney reminded her, with a bit too much gusto. “You and that coin in your belly,” he had to remind  himself, “are the only reasons I’m not driving straight to House On the Rock.”

“Christ,” he swore. “Think a girl on the way to own resurrection might be keen on getting there as soon as possible.” Laura just gave him an aloof look and stormed towards Salim, despite Sweeney’s objections. 

“House On the Rock, Wisconsin,” she divulged to Salim. “That’s where they’re going. That’s where they’re all going to be… go find your man. Your God, your Jinn.”

Salim didn’t need to be told twice, but before he left he gave a last comment to Sweeney.

“You are an unpleasant creature.”

Laura shot Sweeney a sideways look that said,  _ he’s right _ .

Sweeney started to pitch a fit that they’d lost their ride, but Laura had already thought about that. She set her sights on an ice cream truck parked behind the white buffalo.

“Is that light blue?” she asked Sweeney when he fell in step behind her. It wasn’t relevant to the plan, she was just curious, and he’d been answering her color questions so far without raising a brow.

“Yes.”

Laura had already broken the handle off the back of the truck before its driver came over.  

“Hello. Can I uh, help you with something ma’am?” the ice cream boy asked.

“Yes,” Laura answered, sounded positively delighted. “I’ve always wanted to steal a car. So I’m gonna steal yours.” 

“It’s not mine, It’s my boss’s.”

Despite that, he didn’t put up much of a fight. He only asked if they could make it look he’d been properly robbed so his boss would believe him. A punch from Sweeney (not Laura, despite the ice cream boy’s misguided notion she’d go easier on him) later, the two of them hopped into their new transport.

 

* * *

 

“Aren’t you curious as to why I’m always asking you what colors are called?” Laura finally asked after a half a day on the road in their stolen ice cream truck. It was so cold it nearly put Sweeney into a coma, but Laura loved it. 

Sweeney had been dreading this conversation. Really, truly, was. She was constantly asking for the name for common colors, having trouble placing her blues from her purples. But he’d never questioned it. If he did, that went down a rabbit hole he had no clue how to navigate. He was certain it would muck things up. 

Laura wasn’t exactly pleasant company. Besides the more colorful words he’d used to describe her, she was downright mean. Anger, sarcasm, bitterness were her most dominant traits. He was genuinely confused as to how she loved her husband - loved anyone - so much that she’d try to get him back after death. 

_ Till death do you part _ , he’d reminded her, in a self-serving move. 

Despite Laura’s general demeanor, he enjoyed being around her. Maybe it was because he felt good rectifying a situation he’d caused. Perhaps, it was because she had his lucky coin and it was helping him via proximity. He knew, realistically it was probably more attuned to the fact she was his soulmate. However it was happening, Sweeney was happy for it. He much prefered Laura yelling at him than Wednesday. 

He didn’t want to mess their delicate love-hate relationship up. At this point, he was pretty sure Laura was just experiencing hate with a bit of comrodarity, but it was a start. He couldn’t go screw up their dynamic before she’d been brought back to life by telling her truth. 

So Sweeney shrugged, and added a dismissive “sure”. 

“Well, I was born with achromatopsia,” she started, “it’s a disorder where you only see in black and white. My mother fucking freaked out about it. She was pissed I’d never see all the pink she’d thrown into my closet... anyways, I had it all my life. Sucked.”

“That does suck, dead wife” Sweeney echoed, careful to let very little sympathy into his voice. 

“Anyways, the reason I bring it up,” she continued, “I finally started seeing color again, the other day. I think it’s because of your coin-” 

_ Ah,  _ Sweeney first thought. It explained why she wasn’t so confused about her sudden sight. He should’ve been relieved, should’ve been happy Laura had come up with her own theory. He just couldn’t help himself though.

“Did your sight come back when you woke up in your dead body?” As soon as the question left his lips he wanted to maim himself. 

“Well, no, but it was when you walked into the room. I stand fully by my statement that this my fucking coin now, but, maybe the coin responded to you being nearby. And it got confused and fixed my achromatopsia.” It was a flawed theory. But it was the only thing Laura had, so she stuck to it.

“Are you asking me if my coin has magical vision properties?” Sweeney knew for a fact it did not. Though, to be fair, he’d never actually ingested it. 

“No, I’m wondering if it’ll be gone when I’m properly alive again and you have the coin back.”

“Oh,” Sweeney said rather dumbly. She’d decided her conjecture was true. 

“I mean I’d much rather be alive but I’m really loving this whole seeing color thing,” she clarified. Sweeney mentally agreed. He’d only gotten a split second of true color, but even the desaturated color was nice to see. He was trying to ignore the fact that it had dimmed ever so slightly over the past few days. He knew was that probably meant, but he couldn’t get Laura to Easter faster.

“I don’t know,” he said with another shrug. With his massive body and such little room in the ice cream seats, his shrugs were no small feat. He really pulling out all the stops to dismiss this entire conversation. She’d probably like to know her color was there for good unless he died, but that opened up the can of worms he was trying to avoid. 

“You’re not being helpful. And you’re acting fucking weird, ginger minge,” she observed. 

“Don’t have to be helpful, dead wife, I’m already saving your life,” he reminded her. “You’re heading towards a god  _ I _ know who can fix you.”

Laura hummed, stealing a look over to him.

“Well, you’re not exactly acting selflessly, are you,” she pointed out.

“Who needs selfless? No one acts without some self-interest, dead wife,” Sweeney said, “no one. At least with me, you know why I’m helping you.”  _ Mostly _ , he mentally tacked on but didn’t voice.

“Shadow did,” she mused. “He took the fall for robbing a casino when it was my idea. That was selfless.”

“Was it though?” Sweeney was trying to prove a point here, and Laura was getting lost in logistics.

“He did it because I said it would make me happy,” she explained. Sweeney took in this information.

“Well, he did something for you, but because it was in his best self-interest to do so. You were his wife-”

“Am his wife,” Laura interjected. 

“Ok, you are his wife,” Sweeney corrected. “But even if something is done in an act of love, it is still inherently self-serving. He was attempting to maintain your love. Would you have still loved Shadow if he refused to rob the bank for.”

“Sure,” Laura played along.

“Sure?” he repeated with a laugh. “Such confidence in your man.”

“Not a lack of confidence in Shadow. In me. I probably would’ve broken the bug spray out again.”

That stumped him. 

“Broken the bug spray out. Is that slang for something?” 

“No,” she said, voice with little reflection. “I tried to kill myself using bug spray in a closed tub once. Only got a weird fucking high before I stopped.”

Sweeney could only stare as he tried to digest what he’d just heard.

“Stop looking at me like that, ginger minge. My death has made me appreciate life. Besides, I didn’t go through with it.”

Sweeney had plenty of rough patches in his life. Rough patches that were practically eras. What had gotten him through him was the motivation to live. He tried to imagine a version of himself where his natural response was to end it. He probably wouldn’t have lasted that long. 

“I’m sorry,” was all he said. Those two words were spoken in earnest.

“Don’t get sentimental on me,” was her response, followed by an unsteady laugh. If she’d stolen a glance at Sweeney she would’ve found precisely that in his eyes. Sentiment. “Besides, my death hasn’t been peachy fucking keen.”

She said that, but besides the obvious lack of heartbeat, she’d felt more alive in death than in life. At least, what she thought she should feel in life. Everyone was always going on about motivations and dreams and Laura never any of that. Figuring things out with Shadow, that was a motivation.

“The colors are nice though?” Sweeney asked, and Laura sighed. 

“Yeah, the colors are really nice.”

 

* * *

 

Of course, despite her no fucks-left-to-give attitude, she’d swerve for a bunny. 

By the time Sweeney came to his senses, the world was black and white. It was different this time too; gut wrenching in a different variety than the first time Laura had died. 

He crawled out of the flipped truck and observed the damage. Laura was splayed out on the road at least ten feet from the crash. She was so light she’d just been thrown out. 

The bunny was happily hopping back into the woods.

He was hobbling towards her when he saw his coin gleaming on top of the asphalt. He picked it up but there no satisfaction. All he could focus on was Laura’s corpse, back to lifeless, a few feet away. It was a sense of dejavu, only the sinking feeling came before he walked up to Laura.

He had a choice, in theory. He could’ve walked away then there, with his coin back his pocket, and headed to House on the Rock like Wednesday had ordered. But they’d gotten this far. Laura was so close to being truly alive again. Sweeney could have his coin back too.

Wednesday would be pissed of course. He wanted the dead wife to stay dead. Well,  _ fuck him  _ Sweeney thought as he moved towards Laura. It wasn’t enough just to think curse him in his head. Sweeney shouted to the heavens.

“"Créd as co tarlaid an cac-sa dam?”  _ What is it that has brought this shit to me? _ “Nach lór rofhulangas? Is lór chena, níam olc! Níam!"  _ Is it not enough that I have suffered? It is enough indeed, I'm not evil! I'm not! _

He hoped one of Wednesday’s damned ravens had heard. 

The whole situation was truly fucked up. On par with his lot in life, but still. And this time it wasn’t even Wednesday’s intentions to screw with Sweeney so epicly; he hadn’t known she’d be his soulmate. The coincidental nature of it of it almost made it worse. In Sweeney’s world, coincidences were usually just sneaky gods. 

But this? Sweeney swore a final time before he crouched down to piece Laura back together. Her heart had flung a foot to the left, so he put that back underneath her torn skin. The stitches that had held her together were wide open. When he placed the coin back in her it only took a matter of moments. His coin glimmered and sunk right back into her flesh.

And then Laura punched him right as the color jolted back into his sight. It took Sweeney a beat

to gather himself and to sit back up. 

“Don’t look!” she ordered, grabbing a jacket that’d been thrown out of the car with her and

shrugging it on. It wasn’t her modesty, it was the fact her insides were on display.

As if she hadn’t just  _ died  _ again, she seemed more annoyed with the fact the ice cream truck had crashed. She pushed herself up and flipped the truck right side up.

“Come on,” she called to Sweeney, hopping in the front seat. When he continued to sit on the ground, dazed, she yelled at him again. “Move it!”

Sweeney had just made a pretty consequential move. If Wednesday ever knew he’d intentionally brought her back, he was royally fucked. The whole incident with Shadow giving away his lucky coin was one thing. What Sweeney had just done was make the decision himself. Shadow wasn’t even trying to bring his wife back to life; there was nothing accidental about what Sweeney had just done.

When he finally got and up moving Laura was honking the horn at him, a bored look on her face. It only made Sweeney’s lips quirk up in a smile.

They drove off as if nothing of major had just happened. Laura just thought she’d been knocked out for a minute. Sweeney was actually thankful for that. Laura didn’t need to know he’d saved her, she’d be teasing him relentlessly for it. In the midst of all that, she’d start to see Sweeney cared for her, and he wasn’t ready to deal with that quite yet.

He’d need to be soon.

 

* * *

 

When they got to the mystery estate, Laura was floored. She believed the whole  _ gods are real _ thing because it was the only explanation she had, but a dozen variations of Jesus loitering outside some grand mansion in Kentucky on Easter day? Laura was raised in Catholicism but didn’t turn out to be the believer her parents had hoped for.

“Jesus christ, are they all… Jesuses?” 

Sweeney didn’t bother with indulging in her with a yes, just carried on. Laura could tell he was a bit agitated now they’d arrived to this mysterious ressurector’s home. Sweeney had pretended to fall asleep while Laura drove the last few miles, plopped the blanket right over his head. She knew he wasn’t really asleep though; he kept fidgeting and his breathing was irregular. 

She didn’t need to blow his cover and ask for directions though. The glow of Shadow in the distance is what guided her. It sounded downright clandestine when she put it like that.

“Right, cause, Jesus is real,” she muttered, Sweeney trailing in front of her into the house. She wasn’t sure if the realization that all gods were real undermined the confirmation of a specific Christian God, but didn’t have the brain power to dwell on that. Not unless he was the one Sweeney had the connect with.

All things considered, she doubted it.

Upon entrance,  they were ushered by rabbits into a corner away from the pastel jubilation. Sweeney seemed to think this was normal, so she went with it. The decorations they were whisked away from were a feast for Laura’s eyes, but with all the vibrancy she realized there was a dull to her color. When she got in front of a mirror she could see the grey cast starting to cover her eyes. It was another sign of decay.

That, and the maggots she was throwing up into a nice sink. 

Sweeney watched as Laura practically unraveled in front of him. She was in a powder room, looking at herself in the mirror, while he waited in the hallway. He tried to look casual, but in truth, he wasn’t sure how things would shake out. Ostara, the goddess whose house he’d just barged into with a dead girl, was the pagan goddess Easter. She far predated the Christian slant of celebration, but she ushered in Spring and rebirth. It wasn’t just a fear she might not help Laura, it was a fear she could tell the truth of other issues. 

“A dead girl?” Ostara hissed out when she entered. “I have a house full of guests and a garage full of caterers and you brought me a dead girl.”

“Hi,” Laura said, walking out to greet her, “you have a lovely home.” If it were any other time, Sweeney would have laughed at Laura’s attempted pleasantry. 

“Don’t stoop,” she ordered, “someone tried to raise you with refined manners, dead girl, and failed.” Laura straightened out her back but her face had fallen. If she was ever to make a good impression, this chick with the power to resurrect her was the time. Despite the woman’s less than kind words, she had the warm voice Laura figured a lady with a huge mansion with Kentucky would have. “Let me see you,” she said finally, and Laura straightened up even more.

“She doesn’t want to be dead,” Sweeney said, moving closer to where Ostara was examining Laura. She’d pulled back the top of her jacket to show where the car crash had split her stitches open.

“Dead gets a bad rap,” Ostara commented.

“I don’t want her to be dead,” he said instead.

“Reason being?” She afixed a butterfly pin from her hairdo to mimic a stitch underneath Laura’s collarbone.

“Selfish reasons,” he said simply. Laura could take that a different way than he quite meant. “Can you do that? Professional courtesy. Colleague to colleague.”

Ostara looked over to him, and for the first time actually looked at him in this whole scenario. She could sense there was something different about him, and she looked back at Laura for a second before returning her gaze.

It’d been a thousand years since she’d since that glimmer of a soulmate bond, but back in her hay day they’d been quite the popular trend among gods. She was above all that, never bestowed any herself, but she knew the signs of one. She even knew the sneaky bitch who’d done this one, if she connecting the dots correctly. Knowing Sweeney’s vision lacked color definitely narrowed it down, and that it was most likely an old Irish god who’d done it given Sweeney’s heritage, she guessed it a god who finally faded away a few hundred years before. Ostara never liked him, but she admired his handiwork in this instance. She couldn’t guess how the old bat had set this pairing up so far in advance, given the girl’s relative newness to the world.

She had a new sympathy for the situation, but she didn’t like Sweeney barging in asking for a resurrection.

“You all forget I’m not like you. You, I’m particularly not like,” Ostara reminded Sweeney, zipping up Laura’s jacket. “That doesn’t translate into courtesies owed, professional or otherwise.”

“A favor, then,” Sweeney proposed. He’d been holding tight to that favor owed for years, and he was finally going to cash in. “You do owe me that.” Ostara’s eyes hardened, but she didn’t say anything in response to Sweeney. Instead, she turned to Laura.

“Who were you, exactly?” Ostara asked. 

“I was, uh, Laura Moon,” she answered, at first mimicking the past tense. “Um, I’m still Laura Moon,” she corrected.

“Laura Moon,” Ostara repeated, thinking. “Shadow Moon?”

Laura started to nodded a yes, when Sweeney spoke up.

“We know he’s here. We know who he’s here with. Best he doesn’t know I’m here. Best he don't know who I’m here with.”

This, Ostara could get interested in. Sweeney sneaking around Wednesday’s back was news. This whole business with Sweeney and Wednesday’s new right-hand man’s dead wife? An added intrigue.

Sweeney was peering into the festivities, looking for aforementioned he. Ostara had left Wednesday upstairs, but Sweeney didn’t know that. She continued to question Laura.

“How do you feel?” Ostara asked. “I don’t mean existentially, I mean physically. Sensationally. Are you your body, but not of it?” 

“I’m in my body. I feel it,” Laura said. “Death hurts. I mean, mostly that hurt is just absences of things. I’m thirsty all the time. Fucking parched. And... cold. Cold in my bones.”

“Living in her own apocalypse,” Sweeney commented, and Ostara shot him a look that was icy as Laura had just described. 

“Did, um… did Jesus go through his own apocalypse before you brought him back to life?” Laura asked, bringing the goddess’s attention back. 

“Oh, I didn’t bring Jesus back to life, no,” she corrected hurriedly. “He was dreamed back to life on my day. A very narrow sliver in that venn diagram.”

“This is your day,” Sweeney agreed. “The vernal equinox, the light of the world. Rebirth, renewal… resurrection. Can you do it?”

“I can, I have. I normally wouldn’t,” Ostara reminded, “but totally isn’t a normally kind of day.” She turned to Laura, ready to give her the rundown. “I don’t resurrect, I relife. Life has always been my gift. To re-gift.”

“Well, good,” Laura muttered, gaining confidence in his her voice. This was actually going to happen. The leprechaun had come through. “That’s good, because, as it turns out I actually have a lot to live for, and it’s so close I can feel it. It’s the only thing I can feel. It’s the only thing I can feel, so… I would really like not to be dead anymore so that I can feel fully.” 

Ostara was positively moved. She’d never had much positive feeling towards Sweeney, but this decaying girl clearly had found some upside to him. 

Sweeney, on the other hand, knew Laura wanted to live for Shadow. He didn’t want to get in the way of Laura’s motivation, especially after he’d heard she once hadn’t wanted to live at all, but it still stung. Of all the ways things would shake out for him the soulmate department, this was one of those worst case scenario situations.

“So… how does this work?” Laura finally asked. 

“How it works is I found out exactly why you are dead and we go from there.” Ostara shot a glance towards Sweeney to see how was reacting to all of this, and was surprised by the sudden concern on his face.

“Well, I don’t know why this happened,” Laura said. “I mean, I know, how, but… I don’t know why.”

“Come, let me take a look.” Ostara ushered Laura into the powder room light and looked into Laura’s cloudy eyes. “Ah, I’m starting to get an idea. Folks have always been curious about that exact moment of death. As if the difference between one side of that divide and the other could be quantified. Some believe that you can develop a last image seen off their retinas. Like a photograph.” 

When Ostara saw just what that image was, she startled back with a gasp. It was of a raven and Sweeney. With a last look of sympathy towards Laura, she turned towards at Sweeney with searing judgment. Sweeney averted from her gaze, looking down in what she could only assume was shame.

“Death is usually the last enemy,” she started, walking Laura out into the hallway. 

“Right but not for, uh, Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, not for you,” Ostara said apologetically, “And you’re no Jesus Christ.” She ignored Laura and turned to Sweeney, whom she was really concerned with. She knew what that raven meant, knew Wednesday had clearly tasked Sweeney with. “Are you still working for the man?” she asked him. 

“I was,” Sweeney said. He couldn’t bring himself to say he’d strayed from Wednesday, but he’d found himself under new command. And it wasn’t quite his own. He could admit he was following Laura.

“About that,” Ostara said, “we have a problem here.”

“A… a problem with me?” Laura asked. 

“Oh, no. Not with you. You are perfectly lovely, but you dead, yes,” Ostara said, “is a problem for me.” No one had ever called Laura lovely after speaking with her for more than a minute. Laura took time to acknowledge that in the downturn turn of events.

“Well, no, you said you could re-gift the gift, I need the gift,” Laura objected, her voice getting frantic. “I need to be alive.”

“I can’t help with your dead,” Ostara explained, “you are a dead of a different kind.”

“Fuck,” Sweeney swore, but Laura ignored him. She ignored the fact Ostara kept looking at him too.

“How am I dead different?” she pressed, moving closer to Ostara.

“Laura Moon,” the goddess addressed. “You were killed by a god.” For the first time in her life, Laura’s jaw actually dropped.“I can’t interfere with that,” Ostara said, “that is a dead without undoing. Not by my hand, anway.” A rabbit hopped into the room and squeaked out something that Ostara seemed to understand. “Shit, I have other guests I need to attend to. You can have your spineless soulmate explain this all to you.”

Laura’s jaw closed. Across her face a was a dangerous stillness.

“Good luck,” Ostara said, knowing she was leaving when a very interesting conversation was about to happen. It wasn’t until she saw Laura’s reaction to the word that Ostara realized Sweeney really had kept the girl in the dark about things. Even before the goddess had left the room, Laura had completely forgotten about her. 

“What the fuck was she talking about?” she asked to a Sweeney who was slowly moving to stand across the hall from her.

“Which, uh, part are you referring to?” he asked, forcing himself to meet her sightline. 

And god, if looks could kill. Laura didn’t even need to say anything, it all there in her narrowed eyes. 

“Well, you know how you started seeing in color when you we first met? You thought it was my lucky coin. It was actually just me.” Sweeney knew he needed to go on, Laura’s angry but still expression was pressing him to, but he had trouble saying the words aloud. “A long time ago, back when I was first born, there was this situation some people had. In Ireland, some people, like me, were born seeing only in black and white. When they met their, er, soulmate, they saw in color.”

“You’re trying to tell me, ginger minge, that we are soulmates,” Laura stated. She didn’t frame it as a question, but Sweeney nodded. “So, when you saw me in the motel you saw in color too?” There was a tick Sweeney’s neck. That and the fact he looked away from her was all she needed to conjure up what had happened. “Oh, please, do enlighten me. Go right the fuck ahead.”

_ This had definitely gone the worst of the ways it could have _ , Sweeney thought. 

“I said,” Laura hissed out, “go right the fuck ahead and fucking enlighten me about when this happened.” Her eery stillness in her was gone. It looked she would attack him at any moment. 

“Fine,” Sweeney said. “I killed you, Laura. And for a moment, before the life was completely out of you, I saw the full spectrum of color.”

She was stunned into silence for a moment. It was the whole platter of things that really got her. For starters, he’d used her name. That was starling as the rest of things he’d said. But the fact he killed her? Startling in its own right. She had was confused as hell about this magical connection he was suggesting they had. Laura knew was a soulmate was in theory, but that was just a term for people who believed in true love. She didn’t know her fucking achromatopsia had happened because of it.

But she, justifiably, got hung up on the whole Sweeney killing her part.

“A god killed me. That’s what that lady said. You are many things, but not a god, so,” Laura thought aloud, gauging Sweeney’s response. “Which. Fucking. God.”

Sweeney should have put up a fight. Reiterated it was him who killed her because technically he was. But he knew. He knew that he was the knife, not the momentum behind the slow. He also knew that Laura was smart enough to piece together the mastermind behind her murder. He was too tired to fight her on it.

“You know which god,” he said, forcing himself to look at her. 

“Of course I know which god,” she bit out. “I want to hear you fucking say it, so say it.”

“Wednesday,” he answered.

“Fuck that guy,” she muttered under her breath, before continuing on in her interrogation. “Why? Why me?”

“You weren’t murdered, you were sacrificed,” Sweeney said.

“Because of Shadow, right? So, why does Shadow matter?”

“He doesn’t! He’s no-one who just… just happens to be the guy.”

Something in Laura’s face shifted to a anger of a different variety. 

“When we robbed the casino, did Wednesday fuck up my perfect plan?” Laura  _ knew _ it. It had been a perfect plan, she was shocked when they caught Shadow. 

“It wasn’t a perfect plan. Didn’t account for divine intervention, did you?” He said with sarcasm. The truth was, there was no need for sarcasm. It was truly was the most unexpected of gaps. Laura had hardly planned for any divine interest in a home grown Indiana casino heist.

“The whole fucking time. The robbery, Shadow going to jail, me dying, act of god?” Laura asked, shaking her head. “Just fucking with us to fuck with us?” She looked at Sweeney expectantly, as if he would say otherwise, but he gave her a level look.

“What do you think gods do?” he asked. He didn’t sound condescending, only a bit sad. “They do what they’ve always done: they fuck with us. They fuck with all of us.” He took a pause, reflecting for a moment on everything that had happened to him. “Just don’t take it personally. I don’t.”

Laura observed him with a renewed interest. She knew Sweeney was some second tier kind of mystic in the game of the gods, but he was practically putting himself on the same level as her. 

“He needed your man,” Sweeney said simply. “Needed him to be in a place where he had nothing left in the world. Nothing to lose, cause, he already lost everything.” It was Wednesday’s M.O. He didn’t have as much power as he once had, but the tactic hadn’t failed him. Shadow was certainly following him around like a lost puppy.

“What does Wednesday have to lose?” Laura suddenly asked.

Sweeney looked to her in surprise. 

“You can’t fight Wednesday. We can’t.”

“I didn’t ask that,” Laura said. “I asked what he has to lose? You say Shadow’s the man. And that Wednesday wanted him to lose everything. Well, he didn’t. I’m here. I doubt Shadow knows Wednesday had me killed.”

“He doesn’t,” Sweeney confirmed. 

“So… why don’t I fuck with Wednesday a bit,” Laura proposed, looking pleased with the idea. “Little bit of cosmic karma. I have some leverage right. If I told Shadow the truth, he couldn’t possibly stick with Wednesday. Maybe my purpose is to get Shadow away from him.”

“Or Wednesday would have just you killed you again,” Sweeney countered. 

“You’re not gonna do it,” Laura argued, and Sweeney couldn’t argue with that. She pushed herself off from the wall she lent on. “At this point, I’m pretty fucked. From what Mother Easter said, it sounds to me he’s the only one who could revive me. I could blackmail him into doing it. Or, I can live out my last few days knowing I was pestilence like my flies.” She swatted away one the bugs that had taken up residence in her orbit and made a move to leave the hallway. But first, she paused and turned her head to look at Sweeney. 

“What now?’ he asked, head spinning with what he was about to follow Laura into. 

“You said you saw colors for a moment before I died. Is that how it works? When the, uh, the other person dies the colors die too.” Sweeney nodded.

“I can see some color now though,” he explained. “It’s faded, but it’s there. I can tell your jackets red. By some measure, you’re alive.”

Laura let out a  _ hmmph _ , and turned to leave. She didn’t ask, but she knew Sweeney would go with her. 

When she walked out on the balcony, possibly one of the stranger things Laura had seen was occuring. The blonde goddess from earlier was doing… something to the surroundings. Her hair was whipping around her in a current while a slew of people watched, some from the ground and others standing. Shadow was right there besides who she assumed to be Wednesday.

And Shadow was no longer glowing.

“This has been the weirdest fucking day,” she muttered, noticing in her periphery that Sweeney had joined her. Her color was muddled with whatever rot was going on in her corneas, but it was as if the life had been zapped out of the forest that expanded beyond the estate. 

When she picked up on what Wednesday was saying to Shadow, she knew it it was good to step in. Shadow said he believed. In all of this. She cleared her throat as loudly as she could to get the attention of those down below.

The look on Wednesday’s face. That smug grin was wiped right off. 

“Excuse me, I’d like to have a word with my husband.”  
  


* * *

 

 

“Not gonna throw a pillow at me this time?” Laura asked Shadow, half joking/half serious. He seemed happy to see her, especially back outside, but now she saw it wasn’t just her appearance he was so pleased about.

“Laura… the things I’ve  _ seen _ ,” he said, eyes wide. It was if he’d been sleepwalking for weeks and just finally woke up. This wasn’t a fever dream, this was real. Everything was real.

“Same, puppy,” she sympathized, swaying her legs in impatience. Laura was perched on one of the many countertop surfaces in Ostara’s kitchen. After whatever had gone down outside, the festivities had promptly ended. Though Wednesday kept a close eye on Laura throughout the quick commotion that followed her announcement, he let Shadow speak with her. 

The lady of the house was apparently too preoccupied to worry about a rotting girl and her flies in her kitchen. 

“Laura…” he said, voice hushed. She stilled, she knew what had caused his demeanor to shift. 

“Are you still not my puppy?” she asked, with a hint of disbelief. If he believed in everything, he had to realize this was possible. That she was really back, just with some technical difficulties.

Shadow just shook his head. 

“I- I don’t know anymore, Laura.” 

_ Your man came, he saw ya, tasted death on your tongue, and he left.  _ That’s what Sweeney had said. She’d dismissed him at the time. Shadow made her heart beat. He was the beacon in her afterlife. Well, at least he had been. She didn’t understand why the glow around him had vanished. 

He kept using that tone, though. Kept calling Laura in that voice that wavered on disappointment. She knew he’d been disappointed in her for the whole Robbie ordeal, but even back at the motel, he was still calling her baby. 

Shadow was standing right in front of her, there was no doubt about it. He was Shadow, but he wasn’t  _ her _ Shadow. He wasn’t her puppy. He wasn’t even the same man she last. He was Wednesday’s man now.

Maybe the glow was never apart of Laura’s divine afterlife purpose. Perhaps, Shadow had been the one emitting that light himself; he’d wanted Laura to find him, even before he’d known she was alive (kind of) and kicking. If that was true, he didn’t need her anymore.

Six books a week for three years. 813 books. That was going to be his surprise to Laura. He’d learned a lot; he read tons of history and even some math books. They’d taught him a lot, but they were hardly an education compared to his short time with Wednesday. A veil had been lifted no number of non-fiction books could’ve accomplished. 

Shadow believed everything now, but that belief took away his faith in Laura.

_ Well, fuck it,  _ she thought. She might as well tell him the truth.

“I need to tell you something, Shadow. My death-”

She was interrupted by the devil himself. Or, rather, the god himself. 

“Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Moon,” Wednesday greeted, a wired look to his one eye. The rest of him was calm and connected. Laura wondered how he knew the precise moment when to walk in. She’d have to ask Sweeney about that.

“Laura, this is-” Shadow started.

“Yeah,” Laura said, “Mr. Wednesday.”

Laura wanted him to say some lie like, _ I was sorry to hear about your death,  _ but he didn’t bother. 

“Shadow, I hate to rush you, but we really do need to be getting to Wisconsin,” Wednesday said. Didn’t even bother to fake a look of apology towards her. For a moment, it looked like Shadow might protest. That moment was fleeting. “The day of you wife’s funeral, I told you take your time, but after that, you worked for me. Shadow… your wife died. The modern vows are till death do you part, are they not?”

“I’m not dead,” Laura stated plainly, making sure to raise her voice. Wednesday’s head didn’t whip towards her, but it was a slow snap. It should’ve chilled her to the bone. Instead, it boiled her anger.

“Ah, but you died, did you not?” Wednesday’s eye met hers and sent a pointed look. The words were reminder enough.

She had died; she’d died because he’d ordered it. 

He wouldn’t be letting Laura tell Shadow that.

Laura was at a loss. Shadow had left with Wednesday.

Shadow apologized to her. He told Laura to follow them to this fated House on the Rock. He encouraged her to truly find a way to live (which was a nicer way of asking her not to rot). She couldn’t tell him she knew how, because Wednesday was standing right there during all of it. If she was a problem he’d kill her for good. 

Now, Laura had no problems being a problem, but she needed to live. For a little bit at least. She wanted to know what all of this meant for her. Because if she followed Shadow to House on the Rock, she wouldn’t be following a beacon. That had faded. 

Sweeney found her where Shadow and Wednesday had left her. Mouth parted just so in shock; hands braced on Ostara’s kitchen counter to a point they might just snap off. For the first time, he truly saw a depth of emotion written across her face. Laura was more than sad, she was distraught.

Sweeney himself had just had a rather unpleasant encounter with Wednesday. He still had a mad look in his eye from revealing himself as Odin to Shadow. The god of war was right under there, not under the surface, as he spoke with Sweeney. 

It was as Sweeney had assumed; more or less, he was walking a razor thin line. Wednesday would be watching to make sure he didn’t fall off during such an important time. Falling off would include sticking with Laura. When Wednesday left, Sweeney of course, went to find her.

“Weird fucking day?” he asked, alerting her to his presence in the room.

Laura lifted her head up. Upon seeing Sweeney she tried to fashion her face to ease the emotion. 

“Weird fucking day,” she agreed, swearing under her breath before she adding, “and I’m about to make it weirder.”

Sweeney raised a brow but didn’t say anything. He made his way over across the room to where Laura was sitting. Due to counters’ height boost, she was almost face level with him. He was sure she’d be asking him about House on the Rock or anything else about what Wednesday had dragged Shadow into. 

“You’re my supposed soulmate,” she said instead, giving him a sideways look. “It’s how I can you see you have orange hair. Am I supposed to love you?”

Sweeney met her eye, even opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. He’d always assumed that with a soulmate bond came love. He certainly felt something towards her, but it hadn’t been instantaneous. The instant response was the color; he figured now it wasn’t just a nice metaphor, that it was something initial to be grateful for. If you didn’t instantly love your soulmate, at least they brought color into your life. 

“Well, don’t get too excited, but I actually don’t mind your company,” Laura admitted.

She wasn’t really sure how to love someone. That’s how it happened with Shadow though. Shadow just kept being  _ there  _ and she never told him to leave. Eventually, she decided she loved him. So, the very admittance that didn’t despise being around Sweeney was a start of sorts.

Laura wasn’t planning on going as far as to say she liked his company, which was the truth, but almost considered it just to get him to say something. Anything. He was silent as he stared at her like a… no, not a lost puppy. He was just looking at her, plain and simple. No grimace, grin, or sneer that usually took residence on his expression.

Laura didn’t like the idea of falling in love with anyone. If she had a purpose in her afterlife, she felt that would be a strange one. She was, however, curious about one facet of the soulmate bond. 

“I’m going to kiss you,” she announced. “Don’t freak out, I’ll keep it chaste considering my state of decay. So, Sweeney, now would the time to stop-”

He cut her off by leaning in for the kiss first. There was certainly death on her tongue, but there was a spark of life too. Laura was the one to cut it off, staggering back with a jolt. Laura really hadn’t known if it’d work, but she was starting to see some truth in the soulmate matter.

Laura’s heart beat.

Not once, but twice. 

 


End file.
